


Just Be Here

by Lumielles



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Suicide Attempt, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Mental Health Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychosis, Sibling Banter, Suicidal Thoughts, sibling shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:15:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22925503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lumielles/pseuds/Lumielles
Summary: Petra is frantic when Idan disappeared two days after being released from prison and returning to them on Odessen.  She insists her children stay behind out of fear of scaring him off further.  Idan is mentally scarred from his seven years in solitary confinement but has been tight-lipped about his time there.  Some things manage to come to light when she finds him.  (Petra's POV)
Relationships: Male Jedi Consular | Barsen'thor/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	Just Be Here

**Author's Note:**

> This is dark as hell and 100% a catharsis fic. I've been through a lot of this myself, so it's pretty emotional for me to even write about. It's why I've been putting off writing and posting about Idan's recovery from prison for the past year or so. Until I recovered enough to write about it in a way that didn't make me feel worse. With the recent passing of someone close to me, this allowed me to both say the things I wish I'd said to them, and the things I wish someone had said to me when I went through something similar. I tagged it as best I could, but if you think I should tag it with something to protect others, please let me know! Cause dude, I know this shit isn't for everyone.

Idan was missing, and Aramys wanted to put the entire base on alert. I’d managed to stop her, _barely_.

“What are you doing?” she said, as I stood like a rock between her and the terminal, “Get out of my way.”

“He’s on the planet, we know that,” I said, “We don’t need everyone to go looking for him—He won’t handle it well.”

“What do you know about what he can’t handle?” she asked bitterly.

Since Idan’s return, her old anger with me seemed to have boiled back the surface. I didn’t blame her, I hadn’t been the best mother—I’d barely been her mother at all before she became a teenager. But we’d come past all that. Until I tried to tell her, she didn’t know her father quite as well as she thought she did.

“He’s a wreck, Aramys, you saw him!” I snapped.

“Mom,” Brevom said at my side, trying to calm me.

“No, I won’t take this from her right now!” I whirled my head to look up at him, “My husband— _your father_ is—The last thing we need right now is a bunch of people looking for him, scaring him off.”

“He’s not some tortured animal—“

“Aramys, that is _exactly_ what he is right now.” I cut her off.

Her mouth hung ajar.

I’d been so gentle with her since Theron had left, almost transforming into her yes-man—or yes-mom. I told myself she needed it, she required the kindness, the patience, and the understanding. She’d given it to me once; only fair I did the same for her. But her obstinance lately was getting out of control, and I didn’t have the energy for it after trying to keep Idan alive for the past two days.

Not eating, not sleeping, and not talking to me about anything other than what I’d been up to for the past seventeen years without him. I was watching his wither away—when he’d just come back to me.

I was afraid. They hadn’t seen what his nights were like since he came home. All of his tossing and turning, his dissociative spells in front of the mirror. It’d been three times now that he’d go into the refresher, and twenty minutes later, I’d find him standing—lost in his empty, expressionless reflection. Last night I had heard him begging someone standing in the corner to leave him alone as he lay on the floor, huddled beneath a blanket as he curled into the rug by my bedside. There had been no one in the corner I could see.

There had been new scars on his arms, at his wrists, and up the insides of his forearms. Faint and treated, but I noticed them. I’d counted the scars on his arms a thousand times—there was a story behind each of them. Most of them funny—like the mynock bite. I hadn’t asked for the story behind the new ones, and I likely never would—not unless he felt the urge to tell me.

He was alone now, and I feared what he might try to do without me there to stop him. The things that had gone through my mind when I awoke and found him missing. His lightsaber had been taken from the drawer I put it in, the robes that’d been returned to him upon release were no longer hanging from the wardrobe door. 

“Something happened to him,” I mumbled, “Something none of us can understand right now.”

“Because he won’t tell us anything! And then does stuff like this!”

For someone who once held her father on a pedestal, her fluctuating attitude towards Idan confused me. She’d barely spoken a word to him, though he hadn’t exactly been very responsive to anyone after the first hour of him being here. He just shut down; he’d yet to come back.

“Give him a break, Aramys,” Brevom growled, “He was in prison.”

“And I was in carbonite!”

“That’s not the same!” he roared. His voice carried through the war room; we could all be unreasonably loud when we wanted to be.

I realized I was wringing my hands, and I stopped; instead, I twirled my anxious fingers in the knitted soft gaberwool fibers of my shawl.

“Mom, I’ll help you,” Brevom said, putting a firm hand on my shoulder.

“I just need you both to stay here in case he comes back.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“No.”

“So, you’re searching for a needle in a hay pile!” Aramys crossed her arms over her chest, resting them on her belly, “I wish you all the luck with that, it’ll take you all night.”

“Aramys, please, be angry with me when I find him and not until then. I don’t have the energy.”

“I’m not angry!” she yelled.

“There’s one more point for the ‘ _She’s just Papa in a wig_ ’ team,” Brevom said under his breath.

A long-running family joke, one I usually enjoyed. But my son, the budding comedian, still needed to work on his timing.

Aramys’ face and ears went red, “Would you stop with that? I hate it.”

“Take it easy, step-ladder. I heard you have to sit on a pile of books to see out of your cockpit, is that true?”

“You look like a one-eyed shaved albino jungle wompa.”

“ _Hey_! I’ll give you shaved albino jungle wompa, but you leave my eye out of this! Besides, _you_ look like you’re trying to smuggle an orobird egg in your dress.”

“I’m _pregnant_.”

My children. 

Always on task.

“ _Eyes on me, eyes on me; ears with me, ears with me_ ,” I said in sing-song, gently clapping my hands to a made-up rhythm, thus immediately gaining my children’s attention.

Idan had created the melody for them to attract their attention calmly. Each time they looked, they were rewarded; until the response had become instinctual, and still seemed to remain that way. I hadn’t tried it in years.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” Brevom blinked both his natural and cybernetic eye several times.

“That was awful,” Aramys agreed softly.

“I’m going to take a shuttle and go find your father. I need both of you to stay here. If I need help, I will let you know.”

“Mom—“

“Aramys, please, I know what I’m doing. Your father took his lightsaber, and I have a blaster. I promise I will holo if anything happens.”

“How do you know where he’s going?” Brevom asked, reluctant.

“I just know.”

It hadn’t been an explanation, but they both allowed me to leave without further questions, which was a breath of fresh air, because I wasn’t sure how I’d manage to explain it to them. I hadn’t brought up the visions before, I never planned to. What if they had just been delirious visions of a lonely woman? Being able to see through the eyes of my partner at random moments in time… how could I explain that?

The shuttle was on autopilot, so I sat back in the pilot’s chair and closed my eyes. I’d tried getting the visions to happen before, but it’d never worked. But with Idan in closer proximity—Maybe I had a better chance.

It was fuzzy, an effervescent glow hung around everything like a visible color stained aura. That’s what all the visions looked like. Woods. Forest. Dark. Fear. I could hear a waterfall. Something leapt from the shadows, and a vibrant violet glow of a lightsaber nearly blinded me. I felt the weight of it in my hands, the force I had to use to cut through the creature that’d attacked, as well as how much energy it’d drained from him.

_Petra,_ he seemed to whisper in my ear.

I jumped, my eyes opening as I realized my hand was on the controls. I’d typed in coordinates during the vision, and the shuttle was now en route.

It had to be Idan.

Within minutes, I had him in sight. I watched from the cockpit as the shuttle landed in the small clear he stood alone in, surrounded by long thick grass and budding nocturnal plants. He looked peaceful in the dark with the glow of his lightsaber bathing him in a color I had come to relate to their daughter. 

My heart swelled, I had found him. The minutes that had passed since I left the base had felt like hours—I couldn’t stand to lose him. Not again.

The shuttle landed, and I was running down the ramp before it’d managed to finish lowering, leaping off the foot gap that still remained between it and the forest floor. The moon cast blue light through the clearing, turning Idan’s dark gray and blue robe to a bright, almost white. Lightning bugs flew in small groups throughout the clearing, one veering from its friends to fly in his face

Behind him, a cliff that seemed to open up to an abyss of jagged and sharp rocks. Was his intention to fling himself off and get impaled? Or was he just running from something I couldn’t and would likely never see? It was impossible to read his intentions in his panic; even in the near-dark, I could see his light olive skin had gone pallid. The cold southern air coming in for the winter of this hemisphere had turned the tip of his nose, his ears, and his cheeks a flushed and irritated red.

Breath puffed into the air, swirling away from him as the wind took it. He looked like an exhaust pipe; well on his way to hyperventilating.

“I don’t know how I got here,” he said, turning in a circle thoroughly before looking back at me, “But I can’t go back.”

“It’s okay, I’m here now.”

He disagreed, “I’m not who I used to be.”

“I know.”

Through gritted teeth, he exhaled. I could barely make out the tear in his robe’s sleeve; if it hadn’t been for the large bloodstain around it, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it at all.

“Are you hurt?” I asked.

“Something attacked me,” he mumbled, barely audible from where I stood, meters away, “I’m bleeding… I can’t heal it—I can’t focus.”

I took two cautious steps forward, and he took one long-legged step back.

“Stay—“ he put out his hands, “Stay over there, please.”

His voice sounded so small, like a lost little boy. I hadn’t known Idan as a child, but as I watched his hand fly into his hair, scratching at the side of head nervously as he pointed his elbow into the air, I felt like I was getting a glimpse. 

My husband had been broken. The father of my children had been beaten, physically, and mentally. Of all the things I expected, this hadn’t once come up. I knew it was cruel and selfish of me to wonder if he’d ever recover fully—if the Idan I remembered and held onto would return or if he would be lost, encapsulated in the memories of myself and my children.

“Idan, what are you doing out here?” I asked, my worry thick in my throat, coating my words individually with their own concerned tones.

Idan stopped scratching his head, but left his fingers in his hair, pulling on the short, wavy, and gray curls that grew above his ear.

“I needed to go away—I wanted—I didn’t want to become a burden…” he looked around frantically as if he was expecting another creature to come lunging out of the dense underbrush, “Why did you come after me?”

“I just want you to come home,” I said. It physically hurt, not being allowed to reach out and comfort him—to hold him how I wanted. He’d barely let me hug him since he’d returned—pulling away from me after only seconds. Why wouldn’t he let me hold him?

“That’s not home,” he shook his head, scratching again, “This isn’t home.”

“Idan—“

“Seventeen years,” he gasped, “I was only with Aramys for thirteen—I’ve missed so much of her life… Brevom’s life— _Your_ life! And mine…”

Hopeless hands were thrown out at his side before they clapped back down on his legs, “I can’t even begin to explain mine.”

“I’m not asking you to,” I assured him.

But he shook his head again, a brokenhearted and delusional chuckle escaped him between sharp inhales, “Someday you will.”

I couldn’t speak for myself a year from now, five years from now, or perhaps even twenty. All I could do was talk for myself now, but I knew it wouldn’t be enough for him. He was already so sure.

“How do I know you’re even really here?” he asked, startling me.

Icey wind nibbled at my face as something new settled over my shoulders, soaking through the shawl I wore and seeping into my skin, chilling me more than the breeze ever could. 

I smacked my tongue against the roof of my mouth, it’d suddenly gone bone dry, “I’m here.”

“You’ve said that before. So many times,” he said, the fragility of his voice increasing with each word.

I had never said that before.

But now had more information on his time in prison than ever, and still, it was nothing. Hallucinations, or visions, of me. Just me? Ones where I could talk. I wondered what things his mind projected into my mouth.

“I promise you, I’m real now,” I took another step closer, and he didn’t retreat—though he winced as if he wanted to. “Everyone is worried about you.”

“Everyone,” he repeated, distant, “You don’t know me anymore—You’re all strangers.”

“Please,” I begged, heartbroken, “We’ll all know each other again—“

“You’re better off without me.”

“Idan, you’re the one thing that held us together.”

He scowled at me, the wrinkles around his eyes deepened as the shadows made the bruising there and around his mouth a deep sickening purple. He looked like a Sith.

Had that been the uneasiness Aramys had failed to explain? Wars were going on inside him, wars I could never imagine or understand. I wasn’t sure I’d even want to if I could—all of this was already nearly killing me.

I sniffled, “We need you. I can’t—I don’t want to be a grandmother without you.”

“Aramys is having a baby,” his scowl slowly relaxed.

I nodded, blinking past the tears in my eyes, “She is.”

“And I’m really here?”

“You are.”

“I missed you, you know,” he said, his voice steady, “So much that sometimes it felt like I was dying. I often wished I would.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

He smiled briefly, sad and contemplative, “I wanted to be stronger than this. Thought I would be, but—“

I couldn’t take it anymore, I took the three last steps to close the space between us. I needed to touch him, comfort him in some way without making him retract again. My hand found his, and I carefully interlaced my fingers in his as he watched me. One wrong move and he’d pull away.

My heart wouldn’t stop ramming against my ribcage until I got him away from that cliff.

“Please come back to the base,” I said, careful not to call it home again.

It wasn’t his home yet, I couldn’t argue that. I could only hope that one day it would be.

He leaned against me, embracing me in a way that didn’t require the use of his injured arm. He tucked his face into my neck, and I felt the tears—hot against my skin—before I felt his body heave with his first sob. With his good arm, he grappled onto me, securing me tight against him. I was surprised he had the strength. He pressed his forehead against my shoulder, breathing sharply before he shook again. I wrapped my arms around him, I could count his vertebrae through his robes, but I wasn’t deterred. I loved him—no matter how little of him was left.

Something rustled the brush behind him, and he yanked himself away from me. Brown eyes had gone wide as he whipped his head around, searching the clearing. He was an exposed prey animal, reverting back to his most basic instincts in his delirium.

“What was that?” he went to grab his saber, but it wasn’t there. I’d taken it from his belt when I took his hand. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him with it—Actually, it was entirely because I didn’t trust him with it. But not for my own sake. For his.

“I’m sure it was nothing.”

“It’s never nothing,” he swallowed, “Always something.”

There wasn’t any time to sweep up the shattered remains of my heart, I had to get him home.

Then I saw it. Slow and foreboding over his shoulder was the hulking shadow—identical to the one I’d seen in my vision.

“It’s back,” he whispered, turning his back to me, “Petra…”

“Get down!” I shouted, pointing the blaster right at Idan’s head as he ducked. I fired, hitting the creature as it leapt at us, hitting it and sending it shrieking back into the woods.

“Kriffing—“ Idan gasped, still kneeling, “What the hell was that?”

“I don’t want to find out. Come with me back to the shuttle so we can talk. Safely. Aramys told me that all sorts of things come out after dark.”

“Okay,” he said, sounding unsure.

But he stood. On wobbly legs, he followed me back to the shuttle and allowed me to wrap a blanket around him. I knelt in front of the co-pilot chair as I settled him into it.

“Can I see your arm?” I asked, holding up the small wound kit kept on board.

He nodded, slipping his arm from his robe and the blanket. A large scratch across his lower arm, two shallow, superficial ones around it. Whatever had struck him only managed to get him with one claw.

A tremble traveled through him as I cleaned it, and he whimpered.

“I’m sorry,” his voice shook.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

“I want to be who I was for you.” 

“Idan,” I looked up at him. He needed to hear this, and I would tell him, however many times it took, “You don’t need to be perfect, you just need to be _here_.”

“I feel like that’s not enough—“ he hiccupped.

“I love you,” I reached up and cupped his face, “So much.”

“ _Why?”_

Could I list all the reasons I loved him right then? Yes, and I would have if I thought it would have helped. But there weren’t any words that could help right now. He wouldn’t be able to hear them clearly as long as he whispered in his own ear about how awful he was.

“Because…” I chose my next words carefully, I couldn’t help but feel like the fate of my marriage depended on it, “You’re the only person who’s ever made sense to me.”

“You make sense to me too,” he whimpered, about to break again.

I stood, holding his head against my chest as he cried again, body wracked with shouting sobs—crying out with enough intensity that I swore I saw the transparisteel in the viewport shake. My bones vibrated with his wailing, sapping everything out of me. If I empathized with him any harder, I’d be nothing but a pile of ash on the floor. That fact that he wasn’t—that he was still able to survive all this without losing everything… I would never not be in awe of him for that.

“Do you want to not see Aramys and Brevom when we get back? Maybe go straight to our quarters?”

There was a soft nod as I stroked his hair, “Please.”

“I’ll tell them to bugger off,” I smiled and pressed a kiss on his forehead that he leaned into, “Give you space.”

“Just for a few hours,” he exhaled, snuggling into the blanket around his shoulders, “I don’t feel like talking.”

“Who’s talking?” I said, sinking into the pilot’s chair. Aramys _had_ to sit on something to see out of her ship, I could barely see a thing. Without autopilot, I would be flying half-blind.

He appreciated the silence that followed, so much so that he fell asleep. I circled the base for six hours, assuring my children every twenty minutes that both of us were fine. This was his first sleep in days. I would have flown in circles for a full day cycle if he’d been able to stay asleep that long.


End file.
